Code42 raises $85M to prevent company data from being held hostage

Last November, Sony Pictures was the subject of a massive hack that brought its operations to an abrupt standstill. Subsequently, (after much back and forth with the attackers) a swath of its internal data, emails, and personal information was leaked all over the Internet.

Though the leak itself was highly damaging for Sony, so was the hijacking of its network. Sony didn’t have a backup of its data, and that failure allowed hackers to hold the company hostage.

Code42, a security startup that recently raised $85 million in investor funding, is focused on preventing just such a scenario. The endpoint security company takes entire networks of enterprise devices and stores their data in an encrypted cloud. If a device is lost or stolen, all its data can be quickly downloaded to a new computer. Having a cloud-based backup of data also prevents hackers from being able to halt company business operations.

Because Code42 is constantly storing and updating device data and activity to its cloud network, it can provide important information to forensic analysts after an attack or data leak. Analysts can see when data was moved from a device and where it was moved to. For instance, if an employee uploaded several documents to Dropbox prior to resigning, Code42 would have a record of that.

The company prides itself on providing customers with an enterprise product that has attracted tech savvy clients like HBO, Salesforce, and MIT, as well as 37,000 other customers. With the latest round of funding, Code42 says it will be working on developing more functionality around data analysis. One example of an upcoming product is an interface that would allow a company’s legal department to easily access data for an employee who’s been put on legal hold.

In total, the company has raised $137 million. Ninvestors, JMI Equity, New Enterprise Associates, Accel Partners, and Split Rock Partners contributed to this most recent round.